Which means to get to the main point of a movie, conversation or plot of a storyline. And since Hollywood has been making some awful movies that just never get to the point, I've decided to review movies and say my piece. Live Long and Prosper

Paper Man

Starring Jeff Daniels as Richard Dunn, Ryan Reynolds as Captain Excellent and Emma Stone as Abby, “Paper Man” follows the story of a frustrated novelist who gets by through his special, if not odd, relationships with a teenage girl and his imaginary friend.

This movie is almost a complete unknown. It’s been out for 2 years now, and I had no idea what it was until I was browsing through Emma Stone movies on Netflix one day. I looked at the cast, glanced at the plot, and pressed add to queue. What I got was an indie movie, filled to the brim with talented actors, and a really odd story.

The movie starts out with Richard and his wife Claire (Lisa Kudrow from “Friends”) arriving at their new house out in the middle of no place. We see from the get go that Richard has some issues as he starts to argue with Captain Excellent, his imaginary friend. Also, there’s an odd obsession he forms over a 60’s era couch in the living room. She leaves him there to work out his writers block as she goes back into the city to do her own job. Not much is said about how long he’s there before she comes back, but we assume it’s a good while.

The casting was pretty excellent. No complaints, just mockery. Jeff Daniels plays a great nut job, of course we knew this back in 1994 when he starred in “Dumb and Dumber”. But in this movie he’s more of an eccentric rather than a goof ball. Emma Stone is just, amazing. I fell in love with this chick when I saw her in “Zombieland” playing Wichita. Crazy good looks, a wise ass sense of humor, oh man. However, she plays her normal role so not much of a departure there. Now, Ryan Reynolds, he cracked me up in this one. His bright blonde hair looked so awful, and his spandex superhero suit was equally hilarious looking. It’s really hard to take the guy serious in the first place, but add those things to the character and it’s near impossible. Lisa Kudrow hasn’t escaped her type cast as Phoebe. I’m sorry, but she’ll never be anyone else to me. So watching this is like seeing what Phoebe is up to these days. Interesting fact, this is the second movie with Lisa and Emma in it within the last 2 years. They both starred in “Easy A”. Just thought I’d throw that out there. And finally, only being mentioned because he’s very weird, Macaulay Culkin’s little brother Kieran was in this one. I’ll talk bout him in the next paragraph.

The funniest scene to me was when Captain Excellent and Richard get in a fight by the pier, and out of frustration the Captain walks right off the pier while throwing a fit. It’s kind of hard to describe, but Ryan Reynolds has a style of comedy quite his own that totally fits this action. Now, Kieran is weird. Like weirder than his older brother. *SPOILER* But in this movie we find out he’s Abby’s imaginary friend, and when he figures out that he can never be with her (since apparently he’s in love with her) he hangs himself. Well, if he’s her imaginary friend, couldn’t she just resurrect him? And that leads me to my main conflict with this film. The story really revolves heavily on these imaginary friends, but they have way too much emotion and free will to be the figments of ones imagination, mere delusions. It reminded me of “A Beautiful Mind“, but in his case they acted that way due to his schizophrenia. My other bone to pick was the really awkward and weird sexual tension between Abby and Richard. She was supposed to be a 17 year old in the movie, whereas Richard is like 50. It made for some odd situations.

All in all, it could be a hit or miss with you. It barely slipped by as a miss for me, just because there were just some things I didn’t like. They were trying to go for that whole heart warming story deal, but I just wasn’t buying it. Anyway, Ryan Reynolds should do a spin off movie called Captain Excellent. I’d like to see that. Oh a quick thought, all of the funny parts are in the trailer. Including my favorite scene, so just watch that instead.